My ears are itchy, and I was poking about the internet like you do, looking for tips, recommendation.

From my so-far meager schoolin', I know that what is making my ears itchy is most likely behind the eardrum and not reachable, but I was curious what people recommend when I happened upon a video of what looks like several college-age young men irrigating the ear of one fellow with use of a water-pick type tooth cleaner and an obliging pot from the kitchen. Much profanity was bandied about and at one point, the person wielding the dental device said he was going to return that device to the store.

We all have our silly, youthful indiscretions-- some of us moreso than others. What people of my generation don't have is video documentation of same. I would, no doubt, cringe if I saw my 18 year old self, heard myself, etc, and I'm thankful that YouTube and video mobile phones were not an option. The young men in that video don't look like the usual mouth-breathers who prank. They'll probably be going into law or medicine or somesuch, and they may find things like that video will haunt them, cast a pall over their future in a way. It may not be a huge one, but I have to believe there will be an effect.

Our culture is apparently quite twisted, with the whole reality show bent. People lack the subtletly of mind, apparently, to enjoy something that is not visually outrageous and obnoxious. Where does it go from there? What is beyond? I shudder to think.

I just wish people would be more discerning and have a bit more self-respect when they choose what they will share with the world via the internet. I celebrate everyone's right to go to private parties and crochet scrotal cozies for the guys getting their junk waxed in the next room. I just think that stuff is not necessarily for public consumption.

Monday was a rough day. Made a low mark on a test, but it was higher than I expected to make. Not including this week, I've got 6 weeks left of school. Sort of holding my breath. Doing rather well in 3 classes and cutting it too close for comfort in Family Health Assessment, which is the big one. I'm nervous that I should have quit the day job a few weeks earlier. No point crying over spilled apples, but at least I have more than a month to pull that one out of the dive. I'm doing well on all metrics there except the tests, but I'm certain I can get my mud into a ball.

Here Mochi plumbs the depths of the sofa for hidden, heretofore inedible delightments.

She has, of late, taken to bringing wounded wasps into the house, flinging these unfortunate insects with the abject joy that calls to mind an Orca flipping a baby seal. Playing with her food, as it were. I can only guess that the wasps were unmolested before she got hold of them, so I wonder how she manages to extract wasps from stings in flight.

Such a curious and fetching little girl. We should count ourselves lucky that she doesn't have thumbs, for she would no doubt rule us all.

Last day at work was bittersweet. A few people got rather choked up. I asked the lady who originally interviewed me if I am more, less or exactly as strange as she expected me to be. She said I was far stranger than she expected and that she was worried Several times in early days. I said you mean like the monkey story and she said yes, among other things.

Several of my lovely coworkers were bummed I'm leaving, and choked up, and so I introduced a bit of levity by telling the story of the time in a previous job when a monkey masturbated on my desk. This broke the tension considerably.

Friday I felt better later in the day and managed to get a fair bit accomplished on studies. I was a little poorly throughout the weekend, but not stay-in-bed poorly, thankfully.

I have a major test tomorrow and I'm ever-so-slightly stressed about the prospect. This one is for Pathophysiology and includes the chapters on the cardiac and pulmonary systems. Ugh. I'm hoping for middle of the pack. I'd love to be the brilliant star pupil, but with my overcrowded schedule, that's just not been a possibility. As it is, I'm having trouble getting to sleep and/or staying asleep.

Hopefully things are about to take a positive turn on that score, as this week is my final week at my current (now part-time) job. It's going to be a challenge, but I believe with careful management I can make it. I am so grateful that job came along when it did, and there were many times when it was the perfect job for the moment and I was tremendously content. It's not a long-term satisfaction job, though, so going on to something else was inevitable. I will most likely seek to work for them during the heavy summer season for at least a couple of months for the next two years. I leave on very good terms and with tremendous fondness for (and hopefully from) nearly everyone I work with there. The work itself is not difficult or stress-inducing, but shifting gears and completely pulling focus from my studies for entire 10 hours blocks of a day breaks my continuity and therefore causes a different kind of stress. I'm happy to move on and thankful I have that option and that I like Ramen noodles.

Busier than a one-armed paper hanger here, but today is sort of given over to convalescence. The weather is cold and dreary-- my favorite-- and I'm in the recliner with puppies under my quilt and on top of me. A Terry Pratchett book is within reach. I'm hoping this is just a little sniffle and not the flu, because I can't afford to slack for Saturday and Sunday after today. I have a major exam on Tuesday and another the following Monday. No rest for the weary.

I gave my two week notice at my job last week and Wednesday will be my last day. That was bittersweet, but that small job was bringing a lot of stress that I didn't need on top of my school load. School is generally going well, but it's a cavalcade of huge deadlines, so that brings no small amount of stress.

Here's a photo of the pups helping me feel better. I think I'll doze some more.

In the last 3 days, I've driven to Dallas and back, got my hair cut, saw my folks ( too briefly, alas!), had lunch with my dear sister, sat for hours in Dallas traffic, saw my orthodontist, studied for a test tomorrow, completed several quizzes, and took a defensive driving course online. I think i was entitled to a lie-in Sunday morning.

I just had a day so very productive that I can scarce believe it.
I have two to-do lists running lately, and I managed to reduce one of them by about half tonight. It's amazing how much you can get done if you just tuck in and tackle the mess in little chunks. The very thought of these lists had a stultifying effect on me last weekend. Tonight I managed to shake that off and clear out quite a few cobwebs.

I also was able to complete all my quiz/school assignments that are due by next Monday night, so my weekend studies can be comfortably devoted to preparation for the pathophysiology test on Tuesday night. Tomorrow after class I have to trot down to Dallas for a brief but much-needed visit to my folks, and then Friday it's a visit to my orthodontist and home again, with a possible quick stop by Lush to indulge in one of those patchouli bath bombs they have for Halloween this year. Yum. Probably have a nice fizzy bath, a glass of champers and a soak in the tub with Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett, a personal favorite I've been turning to lately for odd moments of chuckles to recharge my batteries. This will be the first proper bath of the semester-- long overdue.

There are new things afoot for me in a professional sense. I'm still working at the salt mine a small amount of time per week, but I've got a couple of other irons in the fire that wll help to sustain me.

The school work itself is not that daunting, but the sheer volume of it can be overwhelming. I've got some great backup in the form of my very supportive family and Himself and teh puppehs, and then on the nursing end of the spectrum, dear friend and august nurse herself, Mrs. Sci-Fi has been a very supportive party, along with the lovely Christina who is in an RN program her ownself out in Massachusetts. It's funny to think about, but I go from one deadline to another, like mileposts or telephone poles when you're running a marathon. "If I can just make it past that next one, past that tree, past that bump in the road..." and then you scrape up enough gumption to pick a next target. In baby steps, you get there, and those people who stand along the roadside, cheering at the enervated marathon runners-- those are my friends and family and pups, and you folks, too: all of you help me see I can do this, and I'm grateful for the encouragin' words.

The brown pups are in bed, but Praline just came in to check on me-- she is never comfortable when I'm gone. Poor little lass was fraught with worry when I was gone for my surgery for several weeks, and when I came home, she'd only leave me very briefly to do the necessary outside, and stayed otherwise glued to me. I'd better help her rest easy (and myself) and get to bed. I hope to have peaceful, pleasant sleep, and I hope you will, too. :)

Every day is a good day to mangle a great Gary Oldman character quote, particularly if it's your 48th birthday, as mine is.

I'm not soiling my smalls just because I'm gosh-darn nearly a half a century old (and STILL so cute!), but I'm casting ahead to my 50th, when I'll have 2 months left of nursing school and will be on the verge of my big new swinging career. WOO HOO!

Meanwhile, I've much work to do. I've been nose-to-the-grindstone all semester. I have a test today and a major test every week from now until, well, end of semester, but I can do this. :)

I've been behaving and haven't bought shoes or perfume in months, or clothes or anything other than sustenance items. Until today, that is. I did indulge a modest (for me) selection of three samples from a fragrance house about which I've long been curious, Soivohle. Carpathian Oud was nigh irresistible, so I didn't. Sample on its way. WOO HOO!

So, for your viewing pleasure. Even with all the freaky-deaky, Our Darling Gary™ just can't hide the sexy!

There is a little square notch out of the concrete at the base of the house where Praline and Mochi have been much occupied of late. Apparently something furry has been holing up under the house. There's been no end of mewling, squealing and barking there. Pulled up a loose board in between rooms and Praline was ready to dive in.

Chuy knows which side his bread is buttered on, loves his comfort, and likes his prey not to know he is on to them. Praline and Mochi don't care who knows, and they swagger around, lobbing Haka like some other dogs chase bubbles.

Shortly after this photo was taken, Praline managed to squeeze through the square hole. Meh. She emerged with blood on her face that apparently didn't come from her. Since she was not carrying a carcass, I assume the little blighter got away. Better not come back.

They say that no sense is more evocative or emotionally tied than olfactory, and I believe this. I talk perhaps more than people prefer about perfumes, but a beautiful fragrance can be a talisman against all the nasty crap the world would serve you up in your day to day.

When Wet Ones came out in the 1970s, I remember they had a nice-but-not-overpowering lemony scent-- I'd love to smell that one more time-- it was one of the best fragrances of a cleaning product I've ever smelled.

Like any other trend-based commodity, industrial scents imbued into household products like cleansers tend to follow some continuum of what is popular in taste for fragrances/perfumes. We are in a rather insipid fruity/floral ring of the Inferno at present. All that stuff meant to have marine accords evocative of fresh ocean spray just smell bad to me, so I can avoid that entire range of the candle aisle, too. I like resins like amber and myrrh, and musk and sandalwood and patchouli is more glorious and varied than you may perhaps realize. But, again, florals and fruits are everywhere. Today, the chypree and fougere fragrances of yore smell like "old lady" and "old man" to a lot of young people. I hope I get to hear today's crop of young adults recoil with horror when future youngsters refer to their fruity/florals as smelling "old." Yup: it's all a cycle. Anyway, the marine stuff is unpleasant to me, and it's in a lot of laundry detergent now.

But that is just me-- sea water accords in perfume may smell like heaven to you, in which case, good on you! It SHOULD be deeply personal.

I feel a twinge of nostalgia for some things I know I'll never smell again. When I was a kid, one of my vaccinations was something (foul to me at that moment) that was put on a sugar cube, but the smell was strange and unlike anything before or since, and the scent was not unpleasant to me. I feel just on the verge of remembering it, like strands of smoke you can see but never grasp. It's not sad, just odd.

If you think about it, isn't there something so pleasing and comforting about the sheer un-changing nature of the smell of alcohol swabs on your skin before getting a shot? No, the shot isn't pleasant, but we feel like we know what we're getting, and that we can rely on this product that's cleaning the area, because we can tell it's the same thing it's always been-- it has that smell.

For me, the undisputed KING of gone-forever smells is leaded gasoline. Yes, I know it was bad for you to breathe, but when I started driving in the early 80s, it was not entirely a chore to pump my own gas into my car. I wasn't hunkered down over the pump handle and trying to suck up as much fumes as possible, but the smell was rather delicious to me.

To complement the king, the Queen of toxic odors was the (methyl alcohol?) ditto fluid used in those lovely mimeograph machines. I loved the feel of the cool, wet paper in stacks fresh from printing and I'd always volunteer to help hand them out. That purple ink was lovely, too. Probably killed a few brain cells, there. I never sniffed glue or paint or anything, and these were just mere passing whiffs, but they are cemented for a moment for me, and I'd love to have a little smell-file where I could just call them up and remember. Maybe a scratch n sniff?

Odd experience-- I went to grade school in Marion, Arkansas, and the cafeteria made a rather nice roll for our meals at lunch. Many years later, I was in Belgium and walking next to a primary school, I smelled bread baking that smelled identical. It was mesmerizing and a little treat to remember, even if I wasn't destined to taste it again.

What smells do you remember and miss, or abhor and are glad they are gone?